THE DEMONSTRATION WORK 



ground which under the father's system of farming had yielded 

 nineteen bushels of corn. The boy went to work and obeyed 

 implicitly all the orders of the Government agent, and the 

 result was a crop of 85 bushels from that one acre. That 

 floored the old man. He looked up the expert and said: 'I'll 

 plant my land just as you tell me to. You know more about 

 farming in a minute than I do in a year.' " 



His Wife was a Helpmate 



*'In Alabama a farmer refused to devote an acre to the 

 'New f angled, farm idea,' but his wife said, 'John, we're 

 mighty poor. We don't have any pleasures. We don't have 

 any money. We couldn't be any poorer than we are now, 

 and this new thing might help us out. Let us try five acres 

 of corn.' " 



"After she had begged for a week, he agreed to try five 

 acres according to the Government instruction. But she was 

 not satisfied with that. She had spent her life in the awful 

 drudgery of a poverty which had been unlit by a ray of ease 

 or rest, and she determined to make this new doctrine her 

 last desperate attempt to achieve comfort and relief. She 

 begged him to plant 40 other acres in com, a patch of ground 

 hidden from the neighbors by a strip of wood. He finally 

 agreed to that. When the com was shucked, that couple was 

 in comfortable circumstances. ' ' 



By a Mississippi Boy 

 "The nickel was given me by my school teacher for good 

 lessons and good behavior for a small number of days, April 

 26, 1916. I bought a crippled chicken with my nickel and 

 raised it to be a grown hen. I fed it on bread when it was 

 small and on corn when it grew larger. She was a speckled 

 hen of the mixed breed. We set the hen. I do not remember 



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